In Defense Of The Eggnog Latte

I was born in the first-half of the 1980s in the Pacific Northwest, which means I grew up in full thrust of the Starbucks Craze 1.0. Our little suburb of Tacoma—I say “our” because Zachary grew up there too, the plural is earned—had one of the early small-town Starbucks locations, in a shopping center called Green Firs. A not insignificant part of my identity development, up to and including various teenaged hijinks I won’t go into here, took place in and around this shopping center, and that includes my earliest coffee memory. I ‘member with crystal ball clarity sitting with my mom in her 90s Ford Aerostar van (slate exterior, beige interior) and taking a sip of her eggnog latte. I was probably eight years old, let’s say.